Better Plan, Wisconsin

From Indiana

Between 300 and 400 people filled the Culver Elementary School gymnasium Saturday morning for what was billed as an informational meeting sponsored by Concerned Property Owners of Southern Marshall County, Indiana.

The topic of the day has become a hot one in recent weeks and months in the area: the proposed placement of more than 60 400-plus foot wind turbines across several thousand acres in parts of Marshall and Fulton Counties by Florida based energy company Nextera.

Three presenters detailed concerns raised by some in the area over the project, which was formally denounced by Culver's Parks and Recreation board recently.

Lake Maxinkuckee resident Mark Levett, who added he grew up in the Plymouth area, opened the event by noting the intent was "to represent facts and not get too emotional." He showed a map of the proposed area of some 17,000 acres and explained Nextera is owned by Florida Power and Light, "the largest operator of wind turbines in the U.S."

Levett also described the blades for each turbine as stretching from one end of the gymnasium to the other, and the towers as 45 stories high.

"They're visible for 10 miles," he said. "That's basically (comparable to skyscrapers in) downtown Indianapolis."

Levett said the turbines do not reduce power rates and while they "have a lot of green features...you don't have them unless they're subsidized.

"The average statistic is you need about 30 percent subsidies to make wind turbines viable. The industry has been around for 30 years and you still need a 30 percent subsidy."

He also pointed out two European countries are moving wind turbines offshore to avoid some of the complications they cause near human and animal residences.

"Reported symptoms (of those living near existing turbines) include headaches, blurred vision, nausea sleeplessness, ringing and buzzing in your ears, dizziness vertigo, memory and concentration problems, and depression. For every article that says there are no health effects, there's one that says there are."

Levett said Marshall County's present ordinances call for turbines to be placed 1,000 feet from homes, while he said doctors nationwide are recommending a distance of one and a half miles for safety. The impact on livestock from voltage surrounding the towers has also been controversial, he added, as has bird and bat kills by the blades, though he acknowledged the question of "how many is too many (killed)" is up for debate.

"There's no controversy about this," Levett said. "If you're in sight of a turbine, it causes you to lose land value -- six to 30 percent."

Prior to the meeting, as audience members filed in, a Youtube station video showing "shadow flicker" effects inside and outside a home near an existing turbine was shown in rotation on the gymnasium's screen.

Levett also showed photos taken at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and nearby Lake Winnebago, where dozens of turbines were clearly visible.

"Those turbines are eight miles away," he said of the photos. He referenced a full-page advertisement published by Nextera in the August 11 Culver Citizen, which noted the company is moving its study area three miles to the east (further away from Lake Maxinkuckee). The move would still leave the turbines highly visible on the Lake Maxinkuckee skyline, according to Levett, who again referred to the Wisconsin photos as examples.

"This will be our new view from the lake," he said. "Get informed -- it's a big decision for Marshall County."

Steve Snyder, an attorney engaged by the event's sponsoring organization, detailed the county's procedures regarding the project, explaining the decision to accept or reject Nextera's proposal will ultimately be made by the Marshall County Board of Zoning Appeals, which he said is required by its own ordinances and state law to consider several factors in its determination.

First, Snyder explained, the project "can't be injurious to the public's health, safety, and welfare."

It must meet development standards in the Marshall County zoning ordinances.

It must not permanently injure property or uses in the vicinity, "which means," he added, "will it reduce property values?

I would suggest the evidence is conclusive that you will see a drop on property values when your property is in visibility of one of these things."

Lastly, the project must be consistent with Marshall County's comprehensive plan, which Snyder said does not anticipate wind farms, and so isn't a serious consideration.

The BZA, he noted, must consider "every aspect of a project at a public hearing," which will take place after an application has been filed, which has not yet occurred in this case.

He emphasized counter-evidence to that presented by the petitioner -- in this case Nextera -- should be presented in that hearing, though Nextera "has the burden of proving those four elements (required for the project's approval) I just discussed."

Setbacks from homes, said Snyder, are one factor to be considered.

"If somebody puts a tower up and you own a building site within a thousand feet,” he said, “you're prevented from building on your own land."

Other factors include security and noise, which is limited here to 55 decibels. Further, he said, a decommissioning plan is required for the project to prevent abandoned wind farms as exist in some parts of the country.

"Essentially you're looking at a minimum of one public hearing at which five members of the county commission will hear from Nextera."

Rounding out Saturday’s program was a detailed presentation from Roger McEowen, a professor in Agricultural Law at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where he is also the Director of the ISU Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation.

McEowen encouraged the audience to read up on the details of his presentation as well as legal issues for landowners potentially negotiating a lease with wind companies, on the Center's website at www.calt.iastate.edu [3].

He primarily focused on the benefits and drawbacks on wind energy nationally and globally. Currently, he said, wind generates about one percent of the United States' power needs, though some have proposed that by 2020, six percent will be wind-derived.

"However," he added, "the U.S. Energy Administration's annual energy outlook for 2006 concluded that by 2030, wind power would supply no more than 1.2 percent of U.S. energy if current incentives and subsidies stay in place."

McEowen emphasized subsidies are driving the wind energy industry today, and questioned whether -- in light of present budgetary woes on the federal level -- those subsidies will hold out much longer.

Further, states like Iowa, California, Minnesota, Texas, and Kansas, some of the top wind energy production states at present, differ from Indiana in that each has large amounts of open space away from people, he said.

On a map McEowen showed from the U.S. Department of Energy depicting most and least viable locations to place wind farms, some parts of Indiana were rated "fair" for placement, but the local area designated for placement was blank, ranking it of dubious viability.

When asked why a company would choose to build here under such conditions, McEowen noted Marshall County has "good access to the (energy distribution grid)."

He also suggested the company will profit because of subsidies offered per kilowatt hour for wind generated.
McEowen described motives for the current push for wind energy development nationally, including improvements in the industry's technology, high fuel prices, mandates in 29 states requiring certain amounts of generated energy to be renewable, difficulty in launching new coal-fired power projects, and financial viability of wind projects due to tax credits and other subsidies.

He refuted the claim that wind energy makes the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil. Petroleum, he said, only generates eight tenths of one percent of American electrical power. Instead, most domestic electricity comes from coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.

The wind industry wouldn't exist, McEowen said, without federal incentives, and the income tax credit per kilowatt hour for electricity produced by a qualified wind facility is 2.2 cents.

Many states also subsidize wind energy, he said, alongside reductions or exemptions from state or local property sales and other taxes.

Some states, such as Wyoming, McEowen noted, are taxing wind companies due to the full "social cost" of wind farms to taxpayers, ranging from road construction and repair to police and fire protection related to the farms.

While wind farms do create jobs, McEowen added, since most jobs are due to government subsidies, the net effect is simply a shift from non-subsidized labor to subsidized, rather than creation of genuinely "new" jobs.

"When Spain reduced its alternative energy subsidies," he said, "thousands of jobs were lost."

Also discussed was whether industrial wind farms constitute "the next generation of nuisance lawsuits."

McEowen detailed possible legal claims from neighbors of wind turbine-hosting land, ranging from ice throws when blades -- which can spin at more than 150 miles per hour -- ice up, to malfunction or lightning strike-rooted fires, interference with radio or TV signals, to aforementioned health impacts on adjacent landowners.

He cited several studies on the health effects of the turbines.

Most courts, he emphasized will only recognize nuisance claims after the towers have been installed, rather than in an anticipatory manner. Instead, it was noted the local legislative process is the best manner to address concerns before wind farm placement.

Property values have been shown to be negatively impacted by proximity to the turbines in some studies, McEowen said, by 10 to 30 percent.

"All this is related to how close these are to your home or business," he added. "Does this part of the country have enough open space to get these away from people?"

Among topics discussed in a question and answer session near the close of the program included potential conflict of interest for any members of the county's BZA, something Snyder said is required to be disclosed by county and state statute.

"Typically, (conflict of interest) means there's financial benefit flowing to one who votes that could affect his decision," he added.

Also discussed was the effect of the farms on Doppler radar for weather predictions. One group member said a wind farm near Lafayette, Indiana, causes the appearance of a major storm to be constant on radar-based weather maps, creating "trouble predicting tornadoes."

From Australia

 LEONARD'S HILL WIND FARM: HEPBURN MAYOR RESPONDS

SOURCE The Courier, www.thecourier.com.au

August 19 2011

BY BRENDAN GULLIFER,

Shop owner Jan Perry said yesterday she had been seeing a Ballarat doctor for sleep problems following the activation of turbines.

Ms Perry, 57, said her doctor was “surprised and shocked” that she also had high blood pressure.

A third Leonards Hill resident has gone public about alleged health problems caused by living near Hepburn wind farm.

Shop owner Jan Perry said yesterday she had been seeing a Ballarat doctor for sleep problems following the activation of turbines.

Ms Perry, 57, said her doctor was “surprised and shocked” that she also had high blood pressure.

“I’ve always had normal blood pressure and had it taken back in May and it was still normal,” Ms Perry said. “But my doctor took it again on Tuesday and it was up.”

Ms Perry said she had constant earache since the turbines started.

Ms Perry is one of at least two Leonards Hill residents who have made formal complaints to the Environmental Protection Authority about turbine noise.

She said the shire of Hepburn had failed in its duty of care to residents.

“Hepburn Wind and the shire have ruined our lives,” she said. “We can’t sell, we can’t move.”

But another Leonards Hill resident spoke highly of the turbines.

Dianne Watson, 56, a pensioner, rents a cottage with her husband from turbine landholder Ron Liversidge.

“We’re down the hill, below the turbines, and you can’t hear them at all,” Mrs Watson said.

Mayor Rod May said he hadn’t received any correspondence “of late” about problems associated with the wind farm.

“The shire probably needs to be convinced of the causal link between the wind turbines and the syndromes that are being presented,” he said.

Second story:

WIND FARM SICKNESS: BALLARAT DOCTOR CALLS FOR STUDY

SOURCE The Courier, www.thecourier.com.au

August 19 2011

BY BRENDAN GULLIFER,

“Patients present with a complex array of symptoms. You hear it once, then a second person comes along with something similar. By the third or fourth person, you’re starting to think there’s something here.

A Ballarat doctor yesterday joined the wind turbine debate, comparing the alleged link between health problems associated with turbines to cigarette smoking’s connection to cancer back in the 1950s.

Sleep physician Dr Wayne Spring said he had been treating patients from Waubra and Leonards Hill and he supported a senate inquiry call for a formal health study.

“Research needs to be done into the whole concept of wind farms,” Dr Spring said yesterday. “It’s like cigarettes in the 50s; people didn’t believe they caused lung cancer and now we’ve got people living near turbines coming in early with all sorts of conditions. We’ve got to acknowledge the facts.

“Some of these people are called hysterics or it’s psychosomatic or they’re labelled as jumping on the bandwagon. People in industry and government dismiss these people but this is an important issue.”

Dr Spring’s comments follow those this week of Daylesford doctor Andja Mitric-Andjic.

Dr Mitric-Andjic said she had been treating Leonards Hill residents for problems associated with sleep disturbance since turbines began operating in the area earlier this year.

Hepburn Wind chairman Simon Holmes a Court said much of the anxiety from residents living near turbines was created by “misinformation spread by anti-wind activists”.

But Dr Spring said the problem was anecdotal evidence was not regarded as scientific.

“We do not have evidence,” he said. “I can’t be dogmatic but we do not have evidence to refute there is a problem.

“Patients present with a complex array of symptoms. You hear it once, then a second person comes along with something similar. By the third or fourth person, you’re starting to think there’s something here.

“Bad sleep is bad for you, regardless of whether it’s caused by noise or anxiety about a situation.”

From Ontario

A Summary of new evidence:

Adverse health effects and industrial wind turbines

DOWNLOAD ENTIRE DOCUMENT BY CLICKING HERE: Summary of New Evidence on Adverse health effects and industrial wind turbines - August 2011  

by Carmen M.E. Krogh, BScPharm and Brett S. Horner, BA, CMA

Any errors or omissions contained within this document are unintentional.

August 2011

To whom it may concern

In previous communications, evidence has been provided regarding the risk of adverse health effects and industrial wind turbines (IWTs). Up to now, the siting of IWTs in Ontario is based on predictive computer modelling.

While there is ample evidence regarding adverse health effects, the conduct of human health studies to determine regulations for setbacks and noise levels that protect health is still lacking.

The purpose of this document is to inform authorities and decision makers of new evidence, including articles published in peer reviewed scientific journals which advance knowledge on the topic of adverse health effects of IWTs.

Based on the evidence compiled in this document, no further IWT projects should be approved in proximity to humans until human health studies are conducted to determine setbacks and noise levels that will ensure the health and welfare of all exposed individuals.

Furthermore where there are reports of adverse health and/or noise complaints IWTs should be decommissioned until the human health studies have been conducted to determine regulations for setbacks and noise levels that protect health.

This summary may be used and submitted by other individuals.

No financial compensation has been requested nor received for this summary.

Denial of adverse health effects

For years now, the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) has denied that wind turbines can cause adverse health effects. However, based on previously known and recent information, this denial is incorrect.

A 2008 CanWEA media release informs the world “Scientists conclude that there is no evidence that wind turbines have an adverse impact on human health.”

1. None of references included in this CanWEA media release state “there is no evidence that windturbines have an adverse impact on human health.”

An April 2009 CanWEA fact sheet states “Findings clearly show that there is no peer-reviewed scientific evidence indicating that wind turbines have an adverse impact on human health.”

2. The fact sheet contains eight references, none of which state “there is no peer-reviewed scientific evidence indicating that wind turbines have an adverse impact on human health.”

A 2009 CanWEA convened literature review concludes “Sound from wind turbines does not pose a risk of hearing loss or any other adverse health effect in humans.”

3. However, the contents of the literature review contradict this conclusion by acknowledging IWT noise may cause annoyance, stress and sleep disturbance and as a result people may experience adverse physiological and psychological symptoms.

The literature review acknowledges possible symptoms include distraction, dizziness, eye strain, fatigue, feeling vibration, headache, insomnia, muscle spasm, nausea, nose bleeds, palpitations, pressure in the ears or head, skin burns, stress, and tension.

The above CanWEA sponsored statements which deny risk of adverse health effects are scientifically incorrect.

Assertions that IWTs do not pose a risk to human health only serve to confuse authorities and the public on the issue wind turbines and health effects. For example, Ontario Minister of Health Matthews reportedly stated “There is no evidence, whatsoever, that there is an issue related to turbines,”

4. This statement is scientifically incorrect. July 2011 Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT) Decision, Ontario
As noted above, the CanWEA sponsored Colby et al. (2009) literature review stated “Sound from wind turbines does not pose a risk of hearing loss or any other adverse health effect in humans.”

5. Three of the co-authors of this statement, Drs. Colby, Leventhall, and McCunney testified on behalf of the Respondents (Ministry of Environment, Suncor Energy Services Inc.) during an Ontarian Environmental Review Tribunal (ERT). Evidence provided at the ERT demonstrated the above statement authored by the
CanWEA sponsored panel experts is incorrect.

The July 2011 ERT decision for an IWT project in Ontario 6 confirmed IWTs can harm humans:

“While the Appellants were not successful in their appeals, the Tribunal notes that their involvement and that of the Respondents, has served to advance the state of the debate about wind turbines and human health.

This case has successfully shown that the debate should not be simplified to one about whether wind turbines can cause harm to humans. The evidence presented to the Tribunal demonstrates that they can, if facilities are placed too close to residents. The debate has now evolved to one of degree.” (p. 207)

Evidence and testimony provided to the ERT by witnesses called by the Appellants served to advance understanding of IWT induced health impacts.

It is now acknowledged that IWTs do pose a risk of adverse health effect in humans if they are improperly sited.

All ten of the witnesses called upon by the Appellants were qualified as expert witnesses. The expert witnesses called upon by the Appellants have been involved in original research on the health effects of IWTs and/or have had related articles accepted in peer reviewed scientific journals.

During the ERT expert witnesses for both the Respondents and the Appellants provided evidence and/or testimony which acknowledged IWTs sound is perceived to be more annoying than transportation noise or industrial noise at comparable sound pressure levels.

Peer reviewed articles and other references acknowledge annoyance to be an adverse health effect. (Pedersen & Persson Waye, 2007 7; Michaud et al. 2005 8; Health Canada, 2005 9; Suter, 1991 10)

During the ERT expert witnesses for both the Respondents [11, 12 , 13 , 14] and the Appellants provided evidence and/or testimony which acknowledge annoyance to be a health effect.

Research confirms for chronically strong annoyance a causal chain exists between the three steps health–strong annoyance–increased morbidity [15] and must be classified as a serious health risk. [16]

During the ERT expert witnesses for both the Respondents and the Appellants provided evidence and/or testimony which acknowledged IWTs “will” cause annoyance, which can result in stress related health impacts including sleep disturbance, headache, tinnitus, ear pressure, dizziness, vertigo, nausea, visual blurring, tachycardia, irritability, problems with concentration and memory, and panic episodes associated with sensations of internal pulsation or quivering when awake or asleep, and depression.

During the ERT witnesses for both the Respondents and/or the Appellants provided evidence and/or testimony which indicate plausible causes of these health effects include: IWT amplitude modulation, audible low frequency sound, infrasound, tonality, lack of nighttime abatement, shadow flicker, visual impact, economic impacts or a combination thereof.

It is acknowledged Ontario regulations and/or noise guidelines will not protect all individuals from these health impacts.

A 2010 final draft report prepared for the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MOE) states: “The audible sound from wind turbines, at the levels experienced at typical receptor distances in Ontario, is nonetheless expected to result in a non-trivial percentage of persons being highly annoyed.

As with sounds from many sources, research has shown that annoyance associated with sound from wind turbines can be expected to contribute to stress related health impacts in some persons.” [17]

MOE documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request confirm current Ontario IWT guidelines will cause adverse effects. One 2010 MOE internal memorandum states:

“It appears compliance with the minimum setbacks and the noise study approach currently being used to approve the siting of WTGs will result or likely result in adverse effects contrary to subsection 14(1) of the EPA” [18]

Another MOE reference documents Ontario families that have abandoned their homes due to sleep disturbance caused by exposure to wind farms. [19] Sleep disturbance is an adverse health effect.

MOE correspondence also documents families that have moved out of their homes and have made financial settlements with the respective IWT developer. [20]

Based on original research in Ontario, and elsewhere, a peer reviewed article states: “It is acknowledged that IWTs, if not sited properly, can adversely affect the health of exposed individuals. In addition to physiological and psychological symptoms there are individuals reporting adverse impacts, including reduced well-being, degraded living conditions, and adverse societal and economic impacts. These adverse impacts culminate in expressions of a loss of fairness and social justice.

The above impacts represent a serious degradation of health in accordance with commonly accepted definitions of health as defined by the WHO and the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion.” [21]

August 2011 peer reviewed articles published in a scientific journal

Subsequent to the July Ontario ERT decision nine peer reviewed articles have been published in a special August, 2011 edition of the scientific journal, Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society (BSTS). These articles explore health and social impacts of IWT installations. [22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30]

The Special Edition is entitled Windfarms, Communities and Ecosystems. Included in the special edition, is a commentary by the editor, Willem H. Vanderburg. [31]

The SAGE website states: “The goal of the Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society is to provide a means
of communication within as wide of a spectrum of the STS community as possible. This includes faculty and students from sciences, engineering, the humanities, and social science in the newly emerging groups on university and college campuses, and in the high school systems, all of which teach integrative STS subject matters. It also includes professionals in government, industry and universities, ranging from philosophers and historians of science to social scientists concerned with the effects of science and technology, scientists and engineers involved with the study and policy-making of their own craft, and the concerned general leader. A third category of readers represents "society": all journalists dealing with the impacts of science
and technology in their respected fields, the public interest groups and the attentive public.” [32]

One article presents the result of WindVOiCe, an Ontario self reporting health survey that follows the principles of Health Canada for vigilance monitoring of pharmaceuticals and other products. [33]

Another article documents social justice impacts when people cannot obtain mitigation or resolution and in some cases, have abandoned their homes due to IWT exposure. [34]

An article authored by Dr. Bob Thorne documents his research on IWT noise and correlates this with reported IWT adverse health impacts. Based this field work Dr. Thorne concludes a sound level of LAeq 32 dB outside the residence is required to avoid serious harm to human health. [35]

Ontario MOE documents obtained from a Freedom of Information request support a 32 dBA sound limit for IWTs. Based on real world field investigations MOE field officers advised the Ministry about IWT adverse effects and stated “… the setback distances should be calculated using a sound level limit of 30 to 32 dBA at the receptor, instead of the 40 dBA sound level limit.” [36]

Dr. Robert McMurtry, former Dean of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, and 2011 recipient of Member of Order of Canada, published a case definition to facilitate a clinical diagnosis regarding adverse health effects and IWTs. [37]

Other articles explore topics including how to properly interpret IWT epidemiological evidence, [38] the physics of IWT noise, [39] public health ethics, [40] potential IWT noise impacts on children, [41] and potential IWT infrasound sound impacts on the human ear. [42]

These articles are critical to anyone interested in the safe siting of IWTs. It is recommended that authorities and regulators obtain a copy of each of the nine articles.

Please use this link if you wish to access these articles http://bst.sagepub.com Downloads of these articles can be obtained with an individual subscription for $100. This will allow you to download these and other articles from the BSTS scientific journal.

IWT low frequency noise and infrasound

In the past some commentators have stated low frequency noise from IWTs is not an issue. Other references indicate most available evidence suggests that reported IWT health effects, such as sleeplessness and headache, are related to audible low frequency noise. [43]

A June 2011 Federal Australian Senate committee investigating IWT and adverse health effects report recommended: “… noise standards adopted by the states and territories for the planning and operation of rural wind farms should include appropriate measures to calculate the impact of low frequency noise and vibrations indoors at impacted dwellings.” [44]

A June 2011 peer reviewed article on IWT low frequency noise is available. [45]

The abstract states:
As wind turbines get larger, worries have emerged that the turbine noise would move down in frequency and that the low-frequency noise would cause annoyance for the neighbors. The noise emission from 48 wind turbines with nominal electric power up to 3.6 MW is analyzed and discussed. The relative amount of low-frequency noise is higher for large turbines (2.3–3.6 MW) than for small turbines ([1] 2 MW), and the
difference is statistically significant. The difference can also be expressed as a downward shift of the spectrum of approximately one-third of an octave. A further shift of similar size is suggested for future turbines in the 10-MW range.

Due to the air absorption, the higher low-frequency content becomes even more pronounced, when sound pressure levels in relevant neighbor distances are considered. Even when A-weighted levels are considered, a substantial part of the noise is at low frequencies, and for several of the investigated large turbines, the one-third-octave band with the highest level is at or below 250 Hz. It is thus beyond any doubt that the lowfrequency part of the spectrum plays an important role in the noise at the neighbors.”

Annoyance from audible low frequency noise is acknowledged to be more severe in general. Low frequency noise does not need to be considered loud for it to cause annoyance and irritation. [46] Low frequency noise causes immense suffering to those who are unfortunate to be sensitive to it [47] and chronic psychophysiological damage may result from long-term exposure to low-level low frequency noise. [48]

Some symptoms associated with exposure to low frequency noise include annoyance, stress, sleep disturbance, headaches, difficulty concentrating, irritability, fatigue, dizziness or vertigo, tinnitus, anxiety, heart ailments and palpitation. [49 , 50, 51]

Møller and Pedersen, (2011) indicate IWT low frequency noise is more of an issue for large turbines of 2.3 MW and up. [52] However low frequency noise from smaller turbines (ie 1.5MW) can also cause adverse health effects.

Freedom of Information documents obtained from the MOE document low frequency noise issues from smaller IWTs (i.e., 1.5 MW) at Ontario wind farms.

The MOE documents how IWT low frequency noise caused a home to be “uninhabitable” resulting in family members abandoning trying to sleep there. [53] For further discussion see Krogh (2011) [54] and Thorne (2011). [55]

Research on the potential impacts of IWT infrasound has been published in two peer-reviewed scientific journals (Salt and Hullar, 2010 56, Salt and Kaltenbach, 2011 57). These articles conclude that it is scientifically possible that infrasound from IWTs could affect people living nearby and more research is needed.

Wind Turbines Noise, Fourth International Meeting

During the Rome Conference Fourth International Meeting on Wind Turbine Noise, Rome Italy 12-14 April 2011, there were a number of presentations documenting IWT noise issues.

The Wind Turbine Noise (2011) post-conference report states:

“The main effect of daytime wind turbine noise is annoyance. The night time effect is sleep disturbance. These may lead to stress related illness in some people. Work is required in understanding why low levels of wind turbine noise may produce affects which are greater than might be expected from their levels.” [58]

A number of conference papers addressed human health impacts of IWTs. For example one research team conducted a study which demonstrated those living in the immediate vicinity of IWTs scored worse than a matched control group in terms of physical and environmental health related quality of life (HRQOL). [59]

The Ontario ERT expert witnesses for both the Respondents and the Appellants provided evidence and/or testimony which acknowledged IWT amplitude modulation and/or audible low frequency noise are probable causes of IWT adverse health effects.

Research related to low frequency noise “…confirms the importance of fluctuations as a contributor to annoyance and the limitation of those assessment methods, which do not include fluctuations in the assessment.” [60]

In addition, the World Health Organization states: “Noise measures based solely on LAeq values do not adequately characterize most noise environments and do not adequately assess the health impacts of noise on human well-being.

It is also important to measure the maximum noise level and the number of noise events when deriving guideline values. If the noise includes a large proportion of low-frequency components, values even lower than the guideline values will be needed, because low-frequency components in noise may increase the adverse effects considerably. When prominent low-frequency components are present, measures based on A-weighting are inappropriate.” [61]

Consultants for the Ontario MOE, Aercoustics, submitted a paper at the Fourth International Meeting on Wind Turbine Noise which states: “Sound emissions from operating wind farms frequently give rise to noise complaints. Most compliance-based noise audits measure hourly “A”-weighted Leq, thereby removing the low-frequency contents of the wind turbine sound.

The metric is also insensitive to amplitude modulation and is unsatisfactory when sensitive receptor are annoyed by the low frequency sound and amplitude modulation.”[62]

Current Ontario guidelines are based on the A-Weighted Leq metric and hence must be considered unsatisfactory to protect individuals from the health impacts of IWT amplitude modulation and/or low frequency noise.

The need for research

The authors of a Canadian Wind Energy Association sponsored report state they do not “advocate for funding further studies.” [63]

The April 2011 Wind Turbine Noise post–conference report states: “Work is required in understanding why low levels of wind turbine noise may produce affects which are greater than might be expected from their levels.” [64]

A June 2011 Australian Senate committee investigating IWT and adverse health effects report recommended:
“… the Commonwealth Government initiate as a matter of priority thorough, adequately resourced epidemiological and laboratory studies of the possible effects of wind farms on human health. This research must engage across industry and community, and include an advisory process representing the range of interests and concerns.”[65]

The July 2011 Ontario ERT decision also acknowledged that more research is needed. [66] “Just because the Appellants have not succeeded in their appeals, that is no excuse to close the book on further research. On the contrary, further research should help resolve some of the significant questions that the Appellants have raised." (p. 207)

International experts who have conducted original research and/or published peer reviewed articles in scientific journals confirm that research is required.[67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 ,73 , 74 , 75, 76]

Inappropriate use of literature reviews

Literature reviews can be useful tools for summarizing existing literature related to a particular topic. In order to be considered reliable a literature review must be complete, accurate, and objective.

In recent years a number of literature reviews have been produced which purport to explore the health effect of IWTs. Some literature reviews which have been relied upon to deny IWTs can adversely affect the health of humans.

These literature reviews include Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit. (2008), [77] Colby et al, (2009), [78] Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health, (2010), [79] and the National Health and Medical Research Council
(Australia) (2010). [80] None of these literature reviews have been published in a peer reviewed scientific journal.

Reliance on these literature reviews is inappropriate as they contain errors of omission and/or commission and are neither convincing nor authoritative. Many of the conclusions are incomplete, inaccurate, lack objectivity and consequently only serve to confuse the issue of IWT health effects.

For example, these literature reviews limit their discussion to direct effects using qualifiers such as “direct physiopathological effects” or “direct causal links”.

Failure to carefully evaluate the indirect causal pathways and the psychological harm of IWT exposure represent errors of omission. Annoyance, sleep disturbance, cognitive and emotional response, and stress are health effects that occur through the indirect pathway. [81]

The health outcomes associated with the indirect pathway are significant: “Physiological experiments on humans have shown that noise of a moderate level acts via an indirect pathway and has health outcomes similar to those caused by high noise exposures on the direct pathway. The indirect pathway starts with noise-induced disturbances of activities such as communication or sleep.” [82]

The Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal expressed concern that the Director for the MOE relied on references which did not address the indirect pathway. [83]

As a consequence of their weaknesses some literature reviews have been criticized for their poor quality.

In March 2011, the Chief Executive Officer of National Health and Medical Research Council stated regarding their July 2010 literature review: “We regard this as a work in progress. We certainly do not believe that this question has been settled. That is why we are keeping it under constant review. That is why we said in our review that we believe authorities must take a precautionary approach to this.” [84]

Chatham-Kent Public Health Unit (2008), [85] Colby et al, December 2009, [86] Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health (2010), 87 share many of the same weaknesses as National Health and Medical Research Council (2010). [88]

These literature reviews cannot be relied for Renewable Energy Applications and/or Renewable Energy Approvals to support the contention there is no evidence that IWTs can cause adverse health effects. For detailed analysis of some of these literature reviews visit www.windvigilance.com

Conclusion

Based on the best available evidence the following conclusions can be made

1. The Canadian Wind Energy Association sponsored statements that IWTs do not pose a risk of adverse health effects in humans are scientifically incorrect.

2. Experts who have conducted original research and/or published peer reviewed articles in scientific journals confirm IWTs can harm human health if they not sited properly.

3. Acknowledged adverse health effects include: annoyance, stress, sleep disturbance, headache, tinnitus, ear pressure, dizziness, vertigo, nausea, visual blurring, tachycardia, irritability, problems with concentration and memory, and panic episodes associated with sensations of internal pulsation or quivering when awake or asleep.

Other adverse impacts include reduced well-being, degraded living conditions, and adverse societal and economic impacts. These adverse impacts culminate in expressions of a loss of fairness and social justice.

4. The above impacts in conclusion 3 represent a serious degradation of health in accordance with commonly accepted definitions of health as defined by the WHO and the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion.

5. It is expected that at typical setbacks and with the noise study approach currently being used in Ontario to approve the siting of IWTs, a non trivial percentage of exposed individuals will experience serious degradation of health.

6. Harm to human health can be avoided with science based regulations based on research conducted on human response to IWT exposure.

7. Experts who have conducted original research and/or published peer reviewed articles in scientific journals confirm that research is required to establish scientifically based IWT regulations to protect human health.

8. Until scientifically based research has been conducted IWTs should not sited in proximity to human habitation.

Respectfully submitted,
Carmen Krogh, BScPharm
Ontario, Canada
krogh@email.toast.net

Brett Horner, BA, CMA
Ontario, Canada
brett_horner@toast.net

NOTE: Full list of numbered references are on the original document: DOWNLOAD IT BY CLICKING HERE: Summary of New Evidence on Adverse health effects and industrial wind turbines - August 2011 

From Ontario

MINISTRY MEMO SAYS NOISE LIMIT TOO HIGH FOR ONTARIO TURBINES

SOURCE: Postmedia News, www.windsorstar.com

August 15, 2011

By Don Butler,

OTTAWA — Ontario regulations permit wind turbines to produce too much noise, says an internal memo written by a provincial Ministry of the Environment official who recommended a sharp reduction in allowable levels.

The April 2010 memo, written by Cameron Hall, a senior environmental officer in the ministry’s Guelph district office, was obtained through Freedom of Information and released Monday by Wind Concerns Ontario, a coalition of 58 grassroots anti-wind groups in Ontario.

The memo concludes that the current limit of 40 decibels should be reduced to 30 to 32 decibels. In the opinion of ministry officers, that level of sound “would not cause or be likely to cause adverse effects” for residents living near turbines, it says.

Reducing noise standards to that level would require the province to significantly increase its current 550-metre minimum setback for turbines from surrounding buildings.

John Laforet, president of Wind Concerns Ontario, said Hall’s conclusions were “based on scientific analysis and fieldwork done by the ministry. This isn’t some wind opponent saying it.”

But Jonathan Rose, a spokesman for Environment Minister John Wilkinson, said the 40 decibel standard is what the World Health Organization suggests to protect human health.

“Our noise limit is tougher than California, Minnesota, New York, France, Denmark and Germany, just to name a few,” Rose said. “All this information was already examined by the Environmental Review Tribunal, an independent, quasi-judicial body which ruled that wind farm projects in Ontario are safe.”

Release of the memo marks the start of what Wind Concerns Ontario is dubbing its “WindyLeaks” campaign, a reference to WikiLeaks, the website that released hundreds of thousands of leaked government documents and e-mails earlier this year.

Laforet said FOI requests by his group have produced “1,200 pages of embarrassment” for the government of Premier Dalton McGuinty. Between now and the Oct. 6 provincial election, the coalition plans to release more damaging memos it has obtained, he said.

“We want Ontarians to know that this multi-billion-dollar program is based on absolute lies,” Laforet said, adding that some of the documents will be released in “vulnerable Liberal ridings” to encourage voters to punish incumbents.

Industrial wind turbines, which have proliferated in Ontario thanks to the government’s green energy agenda, have emerged as a wedge election issue in rural parts of the province. Some who live near wind farms say the turbines are affecting their health, their property values and their enjoyment of their surroundings.

In his memo, Hall says Ontario’s current minimum setback for turbines was based on the assumption that the “sound contamination” they emit does not have a “tonal quality or a cyclic variation quality.”

But that “is not supported by our field observations,” he writes. Ministry officers at the Melancthon Ecopower Centre wind plant have confirmed residents’ complaints that the turbines produce a “blade swoosh” sound.

According to a 2008 ministry guideline, such sounds should trigger a five-decibel “penalty,” the memo notes, reducing the allowable maximum to 35 decibels. To take account of measurement errors, that should be further reduced to between 30 and 32 decibels, it says.

But Rose said the ministry already regularly applies a five-decibel penalty for any project with a transformer.

Hall’s memo also says the sound level limits used to establish the 550-metre setback “fail to recognize the potential quietness of some rural areas. As a consequence, meeting the minimum sound level limits may still result in significant sound contamination levels intruding into the rural environment.”

SECOND STORY

From Pennsylvania

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: The high number of turbine related bat kills in Pennsylvania continue to make headlines. But here's the real news: according to the most recent post-construction mortality studies, the number of bats being killed by turbines in our state is twice as high as the mortality rate in Pennslyvania. Wisconsin's wind turbine bat kill rate is the highest in North America, over ten times the national average. The numbers are not sustainable. So what is being done about it? As far as Better Plan can tell, the answer is nothing. Nothing at all. No environmental group has stepped in and the media seems to be disinterested.

WIND TURBINES COULD HAVE DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES

SOURCE: The Daily American, www.dailyamerican.com

August 15, 2011

By JACK BUCHAN

In an article published Aug. 3, (The Wind industry is doing all it can to protect birds and bats), Stu Webster of wind turbine developer Iberdrola Renewables shamefully attempts to legitimize the wind industry’s blanket extermination of bat populations across Pennsylvania.

When built on our forested ridge tops, wind turbines attract and kill bats by the tens of thousands. The Pennsylvania Game Commission recently issued a report that found:

o Bats are killed by a condition called barotrauma. Lights on turbines attract insects, which in turn attract bats which fly close to the blades, where they experience a rapid drop in air pressure, causing their lungs to burst.

o 420 wind turbines in Pennsylvania killed more than 10,000 bats last year – an average of 25 bats per turbine. This number is low because only about 30 percent of the carcasses under a turbine are recovered for counting.

o Bats are an extremely important Keystone species, as they control bug populations. As bat populations go down, bug populations go up and farmers must apply more pesticides. One bat will consume as many as 500 insects in one hour, or nearly 3,000 insects in one night. A colony of just 100 bats may consume a quarter of a million mosquitoes and other small insects in a night. If one turbine kills 25 bats in a year, that means one turbine accounted for about 17 million uneaten bugs in 2010.

o If bat populations are reduced, additional chemical pesticides will be dumped into our environment.

These facts are undisputable, yet wind developers persist in trying to build turbines in the middle of prime bat habitat where entire populations will be destroyed. The short-sighted callous disregard and irresponsibility shown by the wind industry is appalling.

Iberdrola’s sidekick, Gamesa, continues with its efforts to build 30 turbines on Shaffer Mountain in the middle of a maternity colony of the critically endangered Indiana bat. This maternity colony will be wiped out should the turbines go in. To show you just how Gamesa is “doing all it can to protect birds and bats,” they have applied for a permit with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to allow them to kill this endangered animal that is protected by the Endangered Species Act.

They are “so concerned” about the Indiana bat that they continue with their attempts to circumvent the Endangered Species Act so they can build turbines that will exterminate this maternity colony of a critically endangered species.

Voluntarily working with state agencies to monitor and study bat mortality from turbines does absolutely nothing to save critically impacted bat populations from decimation. While the Pennsylvania Game Commission requires bat surveys before and after turbines are built and wildlife authorities require mitigation efforts – bats still die.

The typical pattern in Pennsylvania has been for the developer to promise all sorts of mitigation efforts before construction. The Department of Environmental Protection grants permits, the project is built and horrendous bat mortality occurs in spite of the best mitigation efforts of the developer.

Once turbines are built, nothing effective can be done to stop the killing.

The wind industry lives in a world of taxpayer subsidies, government mandates, tax credits and regulatory preferences. It does not have to make money to survive.

Wind turbines generate only about 25 percent of the electricity claimed by developers. As a result, turbines built on the Allegheny Plateau, where winds are light and variable, are not economically viable. Sixty-five percent of the cost of a $3 million wind turbine is eventually paid by taxpayers because wind turbines cannot generate enough electricity to pay for themselves.

In addition, school districts in some of the poorest locales in Pennsylvania are denied tax dollars because wind turbines are exempt from paying school taxes. That’s right, the most expensive real estate in the county pays zero school taxes, while the burden is shifted to individual property owners, many of which are retired or on fixed incomes.

In times like these when school funding is being cut, federal and state governments and school districts are broke, and people are finding it harder to make ends meet – our tax dollars are being wasted to support an industry that can’t make it on its own. And when there are no more tax dollars to hand out, our government borrows, plunging our country deeper into debt to subsidize an industry that may be the greatest scam of our age.

In the end, if wind development is allowed to continue on our forested ridge tops, wasted tax dollars and millions of dead bats will be the least of our worries. Our children and grandchildren will be left the legacy of higher cancer and birth defect rates caused by the dumping of millions of tons of additional chemical pesticides into their environment – pesticides that will be required to produce the food they eat when bat populations are decimated.

ACOUSTIC TRAUMA:

HOW WIND FARMS MAKE YOU SICK

SOURCE: The Register, www.theregister.co.uk

August 3, 2011

By Andrew Orlowski

Industrial wind installations are creating a serious health issue, and comprehensive research is urgently needed, says a former Professor of Public Health.

“There has been no policy analysis that justifies imposing these effects on local residents. The attempts to deny the evidence cannot be seen as honest scientific disagreement, and represent either gross incompetence or intentional bias,” writes Carl Phillips, formerly Professor of Public Health at University of Alberta, now an independent researcher.

“There is ample evidence that turbines cause a constellation of health problems, and attempts to deny this involve claims that are contrary to proper methods of scientific inference,” Phillips writes in a paper published in the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society. It’s one of several interesting papers in the journal, which is devoted to wind health issues.

Industrial wind installations produce audible and non-audible noise, and optical flicker. But campaigners are fragmented, and face a daunting alliance of big eco-business and government. The academic establishment, which is quick to leap upon public health issues, is strangely inert.

“There is a huge amount of evidence, and it’s incredibly convincing,” Phillips told us by phone, “but it takes a different form to what industry consultants present.”

Empirical studies are rare. Renewable UK, the wind and wave industry lobby group, cites research by the Noise Working Group for the UK business department on its web page devoted to noise issues. The 1996 study, known as ETSU-R-97 (10-page PDF/1.8MB), recommended “Noise from the wind farm should be limited to 5dB(A) above background for both day-time and night-time”, and in the Renewable UK portrait, wind farms sound idyllic; like nature, only more so.

“Outside the nearest houses, which are at least 300 metres away, and more often further, the sound of a wind turbine generating electricity is likely to be about the same level as noise from a flowing stream about 50-100 metres away or the noise of leaves rustling in a gentle breeze,” the group writes.

Yet the ancient study, completed in 1996 and now so old it’s actually in the national archive – has been heavily criticised. Sleep expert Dr Christopher Hanning has written:

“Its major flaws include the use of averaged noise levels over too long a time period and using a best fit curve, thus ignoring the louder transient noise of AM which causes awakenings and arousals. It ignores also the property of low frequency noise to be audible over greater distances than higher frequency noise. By concentrating on sound pressure alone, it ignores the increased annoyance of particular noises, especially that associated with AM. It is also the only guidance anywhere in the world which permits a higher sound level at night than during the day, completely contrary to common sense, noise pollution legislation and WHO guidelines.”

Reality bites blows…

People living near wind farms – and near can be quite a long way away – find the reality far different to Renewable UK’s pastoral idyll.

Dr Michael M Nissenbaum, a radiologist at Northern Maine Medical Center, has new work imminent on the study. He says “significant risk of adverse health effects is likely to occur in a significant subset of people out to at least 2,000 meters away from an industrial wind turbine installation. These health concerns include: sleep disturbance and psychological stress.”

He continues: “Our current knowledge indicates that there are substantial health risks from the existing exposure, and we do not know how to reduce those risks other than by keeping turbines several kilometers away from homes.”

Consultant Mike Stigwood, who has testified before public enquiries, points out that since ETSU-R-97 was published, the World Health Organization has twice lowered its recommended limits for night-time noise.

Currently there’s no solution other than to site the wind turbines further away. But how far?

The Planning Policy Statement on Renewable Energy (PPS22) is often cited here, obliging local planning authorities to “ensure that renewable energy developments have been located and designed in such a way to minimise increases in ambient noise levels.” It doesn’t specify a distance, though.

Hanning notes that: “Proposals that site wind turbines within 1.5km of habitation will not keep wind turbine noise to an acceptable level and are therefore in contravention of PPS22.”

Even at 2km, there are noticeable health consequences.

But there are signs the mood has shifted from one of acquiescence to Big Eco-business – with local authorities judging that they’re accountable to the communities they’re supposed to serve. In June, Highland Council temporarily shut down a 23-turbine installation in Sutherland after persistent complaints by residents. The operator, SSE, had failed to test noise levels at properties 2km away and failed to produce a noise mitigation plan. The stop notice has since been lifted. More are planned nearby.

Related Link

Properly Interpreting the Epidemiologic Evidence About the Health Effects of Industrial Wind Turbines on Nearby Residents – Carl Phillips (43-page PDF/1.2MB)

FROM CALIFORNIA:

FEDERAL OFFICIALS INVESTIGATE EAGLE DEATHS AT DWP WIND FARM

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, www.latimes.com

August 3, 2011

By Louis Sahagun

Pine Tree facility in the Tehachapi Mountains faces scrutiny over the deaths of at least six golden eagles, which are protected under federal law. Prosecution would be a major blow to the booming industry.

Federal authorities are investigating the deaths of at least six golden eagles at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Pine Tree Wind Project in the Tehachapi Mountains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

So far, no wind-energy company has been prosecuted by federal wildlife authorities in connection with the death of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. A prosecution in the Pine Tree case could cause some rethinking and redesigning of this booming alternative energy source. Facilities elsewhere also have been under scrutiny, according to a federal official familiar with the investigations.

“Wind farms have been killing birds for decades and law enforcement has done nothing about it, so this investigation is long overdue,” said Shawn Smallwood, an expert on raptor ecology and wind farms. “It’s going to ruffle wind industry feathers across the country.”

Wildlife Service spokeswoman Lois Grunwald declined to comment on what she described as “an ongoing law enforcement investigation regarding Pine Tree.”

Joe Ramallo, a DWP spokesman, said, “We are very concerned about golden eagle mortalities that have occurred at Pine Tree. We have been working cooperatively and collaboratively with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game to investigate these incidents.

“We have also actively and promptly self-reported raptor mortalities to both authorities,” he said. “Moving forward, we will be ramping up further our extensive field monitoring and will work with the agencies to develop an eagle conservation plan as part of more proactive efforts to monitor avian activities in the Pine Tree area.”

An internal DWP bird and bat mortality report for the year ending June 2010 indicated that compared to 45 other wind facilities nationwide, bird fatality rates were “relatively high” at Pine Tree, which has 90 towers generating 120 megawatts on 8,000 acres.

Golden eagles weigh about 14 pounds and stand up to 40 inches tall. Their flight behavior and size make it difficult for them to maneuver through forests of wind turbine blades spinning as fast as 200 mph — especially when they are distracted by the sight of prey such as squirrels and rabbits.

DWP officials acknowledged that at least six golden eagles have been struck dead by wind turbine blades at the two-year-old Kern County facility, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, which was designed to contribute to the city’s renewable energy goal of 35% by 2020.

Although the total deaths at Pine Tree pale in comparison with the 67 golden eagles that die each year in Northern California’s Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, the annual death rate per turbine is three times higher at the DWP facility. The Altamont Pass facility has 5,000 wind turbines — 55 times as many as Pine Tree.

Nationwide, about 440,000 birds are killed at wind farms each year, according to the Wildlife Service. The American Wind Energy Assn., an industry lobbying group, points out that far more birds are killed by collisions with radio towers, tall buildings, airplanes and vehicles, and encounters with household cats.

Attorney Allan Marks, who specializes in renewable energy projects, called the Pine Tree deaths “an isolated case. If their golden eagle mortality rate is above average, it means the industry as a whole is in compliance.”

About 1,595 birds, mostly migratory songbirds and medium-sized species such as California quail and western meadowlark, die each year at Pine Tree, according to the bird mortality report prepared for the DWP last year by Ojai-based BioResource Consultants.

BioResource spokesman Peter Cantle suggested that those bird deaths may be unrelated to Pine Tree’s wind turbines.

“It’s hard to tease out those numbers,” he said. “Basically, we walked around the site to find bird mortalities, which could have been attributable to a number of things including natural mortality and predators.”

The death count worries environmentalists because the $425-million Pine Tree facility is in a region viewed as a burgeoning hot spot for wind energy production.

“We believe this problem must be dealt with immediately because Pine Tree is only one of several industrial energy developments proposed for that area over the next five to 10 years,” said Los Angeles Audubon President Travis Longcore. “Combined, they have the potential to wipe this large, long-lived species out of the sky.”

SECOND STORY

From CANADA

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: The wind turbine related bat kill rates mentioned in the piece below are alarming and newsworthy. What's more alarming and newsworthy is that the bat kill rates in Wisconsin are nearly twice as high. As far as we know, environmental groups in our state have said  nothing about it.

TRANSALTA URGED TO SHUT DOWN WIND FARM DURING MIGRATION SEASON

SOURCE The Globe and Mail, www.theglobeandmail.com

August 2, 2011

Richard Blackwell

A major conservation group is calling on TransAlta Corp. TA-T to periodically turn off turbines at its Wolfe Island wind farm in Ontario to cut down on the number of birds and bats killed by the machines.

Nature Canada says the project’s 86 turbines are among the most destructive of wildlife in North America. The organization argues TransAlta should shut down parts of the wind farm – one of the biggest in the country – during high-risk periods in the late summer and early fall, when swallows congregate in the region and bats migrate.

“That period is when the vast majority of birds seem to be killed,” said Ted Cheskey, manager of bird conservation programs at Nature Canada. “The evidence is there, and now there is an obligation for [TransAlta] to act.”

The controversy over bird deaths is just one of the many challenges facing Canada’s wind industry, which has run up against by increasingly vocal opponents who say turbines are ugly, cause health problems, and do not contribute to reduced carbon emissions.

The Wolfe Island site, near Kingston, Ont., began generating power in 2009, and an ongoing count of bird and bat deaths has been conducted by a consulting firm since then. Nature Canada says that while bird deaths have been in line with other wind farms on the continent, those numbers are far too high.

The bird death rates from the turbines “are consistently high,” Mr. Cheskey said. He is particularly concerned with the deaths of tree swallows and purple martins – which are in decline in the province – along with bat fatalities.

Mr. Cheskey said his comparison of the numbers in the Wolfe Island report shows the turbines generate one of the highest rates of casualties – about 1,500 birds and 3,800 bats in a year – of any wind farm.

But TransAlta disagrees with Nature Canada’s views. The numbers suggest that the Wolfe Island wind farm is no worse that most others, and is well within limits set by federal environmental regulators, said Glen Whelan, TransAlta’s manager of public affairs.

“The mortality rates that we are seeing in birds and bats are within ranges reported for other wind farms across North America,” he said. For bats, the death rate is well below what is often reported in the eastern United States, he added.

While “bird and bat mortality is unfortunately inevitable at wind power facilities, we are seeing numbers that are within the ranges that are called for by regulators,” Mr. Whelan said.

TransAlta is researching ways to mitigate bat deaths, possibly by turning off turbines at certain times, but the results are not in yet, he said.

Nature Canada is not opposed to wind farms in principle, but it thinks they should be in locations where birds and bats are not at serious risk. Because of its location on a migratory route at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, Wolfe Island is one of many spots where the risk of killing migrating birds and bats is particularly high, Mr. Cheskey said.

Other groups base their opposition to wind farms on other factors. Wind Concerns Ontario, one of the most vocal of the anti-wind groups, claims that noise and vibration from turbines causes sleep deprivation, headaches and high blood pressure. It is demanding independent studies of health impacts.

Anti-wind groups were outraged by a decision two weeks ago from Ontario’s Environmental Review Tribunal which ruled that a wind farm near Chatham, Ont., being developed by Suncor Energy Inc. can go ahead because opponents – who made detailed presentations at a lengthy hearing – did not prove that it would cause serious harm to human health.

Some groups also worry about the aesthetic issues that arise from the erection of thousands of new turbines across the country, while others suggest wind power is expensive, unreliable and needs fossil-fuel-generated back-up.

CONCLUSIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW TRIBUNAL

“This case has successfully shown that the debate should not be simplified to one about whether wind turbines can cause harm to humans.

The evidence presented to the Tribunal demonstrates that they can, if facilities are placed too close to residents.

The debate has now evolved to one of degree. The question that should be asked is: What protections, such as permissible noise levels or setback distances, are appropriate to protect human health?

In Ontario, recent regulations have provided guidance in that regard. In cases such as this, where the Appellants have not sought to demonstrate any type of unique harm associated with the design of this Project and have not attempted to demonstrate the sensitivity of a particular receptor, it was essentially up to the Appellants to prove that the Ontario standards are wrong in the context of the specific Project under appeal (leaving aside the related question about possible non-compliance with the standards).

Just because the Appellants have not succeeded in their appeals, that is no excuse to close the book on further research.

On the contrary, further research should help resolve some of the significant questions that the Appellants have raised.”

Note from the BPWI Research Nerd:  

 The photo below was found on the Westwood Land and Energy Development Consultants website where the 'company biologist' Ron Peterson (mentioned in the following article) is said to work. Wind companies often employ the services of one-stop-shopping 'consulting' firms like Westwood. The caption for the photo below reads: "We've been dancing through the years!"

Photo from Westwood Land and Energy WebsiteMore from Westwood's website regarding their 'environmental services' 

Overview

From lakeshore residential developments to 1,000-square-mile wind farms and linear transmission corridors, Westwood’s environmental staff delivers fast-paced environmental review, natural resource studies, contamination assessments, and permitting to resolve complex issues. By collaborating with planners and engineers, we identify hidden potentials and optimize land use for clients.

Winning Approval Strategies
Our creative solutions win environmental approvals. When a project requires wetland strategies, environmental impact assessments, wildlife studies, permitting, creative mitigation, or sustainable stormwater management, we can help. Our client-centered service and regulatory credibility bring forth solutions that result in successful projects.

Team and Technology
Our team of ecological and regulatory experts creates opportunities and effectively resolves issues for our clients. Westwood provides the full range of wetland, wildlife, plant ecology, cultural resources, GIS, and regulatory consulting services. Throughout the life of a project, we efficiently assess and retire risks for our clients, from the earliest due diligence through permit procurement, and ultimately providing construction compliance monitoring.

       [Wind] Company biologists said they found three eagles’ nests within a 2-mile radius of the project, but concluded that the birds were not at risk because they didn’t hunt near the turbine sites. Mary Hartman, a member the citizens group, was skeptical. Only three nests? “This place is loaded,” she said. Members of her group went out and found eight nests.

         Ron Peterson, the company biologist, disputed that number. He said that only two additional nests were documented, and that they were there because the eagles were feeding on “improperly disposed” livestock carcasses. If farmers stop leaving carcasses out, he said, the eagles would move on.

Davis, of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said there are at least four or five nests in all, and he criticized the company’s initial survey as “not extremely substantial.

Davis, of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said there are at least four or five nests in all, and he criticized the company’s initial survey as “not extremely substantial.”

After a fierce, two-year fight against a proposed $179 million wind farm near Red Wing, Minn., local opponents have only one trump card left — the bald eagle.

Just before the government shutdown on July 1, the 12,000-acre project cleared a major hurdle when the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) voted to move it forward. But in recent months, a citizens group that has opposed the project discovered that the 50 turbines will be built smack in the middle of prime nesting territory for that beloved American symbol of freedom.

Federal wildlife officials say that the developer could face civil or even criminal action under federal laws if a bald eagle or an even more rare golden eagle is felled by one of the massive blades.

“It comes down to whether they want to take on the risk or not,” said Richard Davis, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who has monitored the project for two years. “I do think there is a higher likelihood of a strike in that area than any other wind project I’ve looked at in the state.”

Chuck Burdick, project director for the developer, AWA Goodhue Wind, said the company has been diligent in responding to the concerns raised by both federal and state wildlife officials. It’s done everything possible, he said, to site turbines where they will cause the least harm to flying wildlife, from long-eared bats to loggerhead shrikes to eagles. But all projects entail risks, he said, and the company plans to start construction this fall.

“I don’t know that a wind farm has ever been built that didn’t result in some bird or bat mortality,” he said.

Wind farms vs. wildlife?

The conflict between these two opposing environmental goals — clean energy and protecting wildlife — is occurring increasingly as wind farms sprout across the nation. There is a growing realization that the massive towers with blades that travel hundreds of miles per hour are killing millions of wandering birds and bats.

The concerns are having an effect. In April, a wind development in North Dakota halted when Xcel Energy, which had agreed to buy the electricity, abruptly pulled out of the deal because of risks to two endangered birds — the piping plover and the whooping crane. The developer, EnXco, still doesn’t have a buyer for the electricity.

Just this week, the federal Department of the Interior proposed new voluntary wildlife protection guidelines for wind projects, but they were denounced by environmental and bird-loving organizations as grossly inadequate. At minimum, such rules should be mandatory, the American Bird Conservancy said.

In Minnesota, the drive for wind energy comes in part from a state law that requires utilities to derive 25 percent of their energy from wind by 2020. Now, the pressure to build has been intensified by industry fears that the federal Production Tax Credit, which greatly reduces the costs of the projects, will expire this year.

Wind energy proponents argue that the risks are worth it. After all, they say, mountain-top coal mining and air pollution from fossil fuels are far more destructive to wildlife than wind turbines. But critics say that doesn’t justify the harm, noting that 55 to 94 golden eagles die every year at Altamont Pass in California — one of the oldest and, many say, most poorly designed wind farms in the country.

Dispute over eagle nests

The eagle problem in Goodhue County surfaced only this past winter, thanks largely to the Coalition for Sensible Siting, a citizens group that opposed the wind project from the beginning. Mostly, they don’t want the turbines close to their homes because of concerns about the effect of stray electrical voltage and the annoying strobe-like shadows cast by the moving blades.

But when the company issued the results of a wildlife survey it conducted on the site last summer, opponents realized they might have more leverage. Company biologists said they found three eagles’ nests within a 2-mile radius of the project, but concluded that the birds were not at risk because they didn’t hunt near the turbine sites.

Mary Hartman, a member the citizens group, was skeptical. Only three nests? “This place is loaded,” she said. Members of her group went out and found eight nests.

Ron Peterson, the company biologist, disputed that number. He said that only two additional nests were documented, and that they were there because the eagles were feeding on “improperly disposed” livestock carcasses. If farmers stop leaving carcasses out, he said, the eagles would move on.

Davis, of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said there are at least four or five nests in all, and he criticized the company’s initial survey as “not extremely substantial.”

But at this point, all Davis and state wildlife officials can do is make recommendations on how to best site the turbines to protect the birds. The ultimate decision on the future of the wind farm is up to the PUC. The citizens groups and Goodhue County, which also opposes it, can ask the commission to reconsider its approval, but a major change is unlikely, participants said.

Still, the commissioners’ concern about vulnerable species was evident. The permit will be one of the first in Minnesota to require a bird- and bat-protection plan, which the company must develop with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the federal Fish and Wildlife Service.

Plan to ‘promote wildlife’

But there is no certainty such a plan will succeed in protecting eagles or other endangered species.

Burdick said the company’s biologists are tracking the flight paths and hunting territories of eagles and other vulnerable species at the site. He said he expects the company will also “promote wildlife in the general area” and work with the state and federal agencies on turbine locations.

“We are doing everything possible to avoid the most sensitive and intensely used areas for wildlife,” Burdick said.

The federal government can step in only after the project is up and running, if something happens to a protected bird, Davis said. The options in that case might range from shutting down problem turbines, for example, to legal action.

If eagles start dying, he said, the federal government is less likely to forgive an operator that knew the risks earlier.

But that’s only if the deaths are discovered.

“If there are 50 birds hit, are they going to tell anyone?” he said. “We hope they would.”

SECOND FEATURE: FROM AUSTRALIA

New Video: AGAINST THE WIND

NOEL DEAN: The first time that I got affected was just after they started up. I woke with headaches of a morning. I had to have Panadol. It hadn't happened before.

It happened two mornings in a row and then because we had a property up north, I went up there for the night. I woke up without headaches and then when I come back I did get headaches again.

ANDREW FOWLER: Perplexed by what the problem might be, Noel Dean went to his doctor who sent him to a specialist..

NOEL DEAN: He said it looked like it was an electromagnetic spasm in me skull. All the muscles in me skull just pulled tight like a tight glove. And so I, it was just like it was pulling.

It's hard to explain, it's not pressure like that, it's just as if something, as if the muscles just pulled tight over your skull.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH 'AGAINST THE WIND'

Austrailian television takes a closer look at Big Wind

An investigation into allegations that wind turbines are making people sick. Are these installations ‘weapons of mass destruction’ as some have claimed, or are they vehicles for mass hysteria?

For some time now, people forced to live close to wind farms have expressed concern that the noise from the turbines is affecting their health. They say the machines have destroyed their lives, causing headaches, high blood pressure and nausea. Four Corners goes to several wind-farming hot-spots across Australia to meet the people who claim they are simply collateral damage as the nation scrambles to embrace renewable energy.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PROGRAM

Read the program transcript of Andrew Fowler's report 'Against the Wind', first broadcast 25 July 2011.

Reporter: Andrew Fowler

Date: 25/07/2011

KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: According to the Federal Government, this technology will be a key to Australia's alternative energy future.

JULIA GILLARD, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: We're a nation perfectly position to seize this clean energy future.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But a grass roots campaign against wind turbines could undermine the Government’s plans.

DONALD THOMAS, FARMER: I've lived and worked on the farm here for over fifty years. I thought the wind turbines coming to the area would be a really good thing.

SCREEN TEXT (over turbine blades): AGAINST THE WIND

DONALD THOMAS: But I was wrong.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Another arm of climate change policy to strike turbulence.

Welcome to Four Corners.

Right now the Gillard Government is in awful trouble over its latest attempt to develop a credible policy for tackling climate change.

The proposed carbon tax, for instance, is about as popular as a pacifist at a weapons expo.

The Government is now relying more than ever on its other climate change commitment, to produce 20 per cent of Australia’s entire electricity supply from renewable energy sources by 2020.

The maths is simple; that is less than nine years away.

Wind power will be a vital component in reaching that target.

Giant wind turbines are already making their presence felt in a number of regions across the southern half of Australia. But it is estimated that they may have to triple in number this decade to play their part in reaching that renewable target.

That seems entirely doable, except for one fly in the ointment; the increasingly voluble protest from people concerned about claims of adverse health effects from prolonged exposure to low frequency noise.

Protestors say the anecdotal evidence is growing, but preliminary findings from one substantial study conducted in two states, which we’ll reveal tonight, suggest otherwise.

And another, more familiar agenda seems to be caught up in the mix – the push from sceptics to discredit the prevailing scientific orthodoxy on climate change itself.

This report from Andrew Fowler.

(A range of wind turbines silhouetted against the sunset)

ANDREW FOWLER, REPORTER: High on the hills in Western Victoria they stand ominous, staring down at the township below.

The wind turbines are mainly still now after furiously spinning all day, pumping power into the national grid.

MARK DREYFUS, CABINET SECRETARY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY: It's now the fastest growing renewable energy source in Australia. There's some 50 wind farms that have been accredited.

ANDREW FOWLER: They’re the main weapons in the Federal Government’s attempt to produce 20 per cent of Australia’s energy from renewable sources by 2020.

So far they contribute just 2 per cent of Australia’s power needs. But to reach the 20 per cent renewable target there’ll probably need to be another 3,200.

DR MARK DIESENDORF: If we look at the next 10 years, we could envisage that wind replaces several coal fired power stations.

ANDREW FOWLER: Few would argue they aren’t clean and green. All they need is a windy location and they can do their job. Many stand as high as the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

They’re part of a patchwork of nearly 1100 turbines straddling the mountains and ridges from Perth to the Eastern States.

ANDREW THOMSON, ACCIONA ENERGY: The important point is that last year, for example, we generated just under 600 gigawatt hours of zero emissions electricity - zero emissions electricity. And that was enough in a local context to power a city like Ballarat and surrounding towns.

ANDREW FOWLER: Towns like Waubra, north west of Ballarat in Victoria, are ideal, with its exposed hills and a regular strong breeze.

Waubra is home to 128 wind turbines, scattered across the pastures that mostly produce mutton and lamb.

(Excerpt from ACCIONA Corporate Video of the Waubra community festival, uplifting music)

For many in Waubra, the more the merrier.

Every year the town holds a wind festival to celebrate the arrival of the turbines.

ACCIONA SPOKESPERSON: We’re here, solving problems, solving challenges, being successful together as true partners for the long term.

(End of excerpt)

ANDREW FOWLER: The wind farm operator is Acciona, a Spanish corporate giant with hundreds of wind farms across Europe. Today it’s spreading the word in Waubra.

(School kids run to the base of a turbine)

ACCIONA EMPLOYEE: We’re making the kids into the shape and size of a blade, so this will give them some idea of how big the blades are.

TEACHER 1: Sixty metres! So that's... When you see it like this you realise how big it is don’t you.

TEACHER 2: Everyone look up, look up at the blades.

On the count of three, blow as hard as you can and we’ll see it go round.

Ready? One, two, three!

(Children blow)

TEACHER 2: No, harder! Blow! Harder!

CHILD 1: It’s going round.

CHILD 2: It's actually working!

ANDREW FOWLER: Yet there’s no illusion about one of the wind farms greatest attractions: the huge amount of money that the turbines have brought to the region and the town.

CHILD 3: It's turning!

CHILD 4: It's going round! Woo!

ANDREW FOWLER: Yet there's no illusion about one of the wind farm's greatest attractions - the huge amount of money that the turbines have brought to the region and the town.

For every turbine the region receives a direct $500 payment into a community fund. David Clark is the former local mayor.

Tell me David the beneficiaries of the community fund, whereabouts- who gets the money here?

DAVID CLARK, PYRENESS SHIRE COUNCIL: Yes, I suppose the biggest money we’ve put is into this $1.4 million development for the community. So the community fund has put $100,000 into that over five years.

Then the other big beneficiaries are the school, obviously, across the road, the CFA up the other end of town, the little cemetery - they don't get a lot of money to maintain the cemetery so we’ve bought them a new mower, which they use on the recreation reserve, which is pretty good.

But we've got a really good little local horticultural society, and then the Landcare groups in the area - there's three Landcare groups in the area of the wind farm so they do quite a lot of work with it and they do a free tree scheme as well for the community as part of that.

ANDREW FOWLER: But there’s more money than that in the wind industry and many farmers have grown rich on the proceeds, pulling in up to $10,000 a year rent from the company which runs the wind farm.

DAVID CLARK: This is only a small town. The landholder payments are nearly a million dollars in itself, so that puts a significant amount of money in farmer pockets around here. And then the wind farm employs 30 people, so there's probably another $2 million in wages that certainly go into the regional economy.

So it's a very significant boost for a community like this. You don't get a leap like that out of agriculture.

(Tractor rolls slowly over a fallow field)

ANDREW FOWLER: It’s unlikely wealth for the likes of potato farmer Lawrence Gallagher. His high country captures even the slightest breeze. In the tough world of farming it’s the equivalent of standing on a hill of gold.

Gallagher snared the most turbines in Waubra.

LAWRENCE GALLAGHER: On this property here there's seven wind towers and then we’ve got more wind towers back over the hill there where my father lives.

ANDREW FOWLER: In all the Gallaghers have 19 of the 128 wind towers in the region– and they rake in $135,000 in rent every year.

LAWRENCE GALLAGHER: well I believe it helps drought proof our property. We've had ten dry years before a very a wet year and it's helped- it's helped us to get by, like to pay our bills and that. And I know other farmers, it's helped them out as well.

ANDREW FOWLER: Yet not everyone in Waubra is celebrating the arrival of the wind farms. It’s caused a major rift in the tiny community of 500 people.

What was life like before the turbines came?

NOEL DEAN: Well, it was peaceful, you could enjoy life. You did you don't enjoy life out there. You just want to get the hell out of there. You cannot enjoy life. The only time you can enjoy life is when the turbines are not going. It's peaceful, you feel relaxed.

ANDREW FOWLER: Noel Dean used to run a successful property just a few kilometres from the town centre. It had been the family home for nearly 40 years.

Now the farm is derelict, the house empty.

How hard is it for you to leave all this behind?

NOEL DEAN: The family we- it’s the only place we had since we got married, we reared our three children here and it was home. But we can’t really call it home now.

ANDREW FOWLER: Dean says the choice was simple, remain and suffer bad health, or leave and lose the productive capacity of the farm. For him there was no choice.

NOEL DEAN: We’re refugees in our own country. We’re leaving here because of danger. It’s not just- no set up or anything, we’re being really harmed.

ANDREW FOWLER: Dean didn’t oppose the turbines but chose not to have any on his property.

The first trouble started within days of his neighbours turbines, which are less than two kilometres from his property, being switched on.

What particularly disturbed him and his wife was the sound of the blades as they rotated in the wind.

ANDREW FOWLER: So these are the turbines that originally caused you trouble?

NOEL DEAN: These were the ones that initially caused us the headaches, but these ones over here was the worst ones.

They seemed to, um the big whoosh sound coming through and dreadful headaches from those ones, and we never come back to live in the house since then.

ANDREW FOWLER: Dean describes the land his farm is on as being like an amphitheatre – a bowl shaped valley between two hills. It’s a wonderful setting but he says it funnels the noise from the turbines down towards the house.

NOEL DEAN: The first time that I got affected was just after they started up. I woke with headaches of a morning. I had to have Panadol. It hadn't happened before.

It happened two mornings in a row and then because we had a property up north, I went up there for the night. I woke up without headaches and then when I come back I did get headaches again.

ANDREW FOWLER: Perplexed by what the problem might be, Noel Dean went to his doctor who sent him to a specialist..

NOEL DEAN: He said it looked like it was an electromagnetic spasm in me skull. All the muscles in me skull just pulled tight like a tight glove. And so I, it was just like it was pulling.

It's hard to explain, it's not pressure like that, it's just as if something, as if the muscles just pulled tight over your skull.

ANDREW FOWLER: On another occasion, he says he went to the outpatients department at the local hospital complaining about muscle spasms.

NOEL DEAN: I was getting a lot of pulsings in muscles and I went to the outpatients at the hospital and they said "You've just got too much electricity in your body. You've just got to stay away from the wind farm".

ANDREW FOWLER: The Deans decided to leave the property and move to a house in Ballarat, 35 kilometres away.

Noel Dean says it was only when they moved out of Waubra and left the wind farms behind that the headaches disappeared. His neighbojurs Lawrence and Kerryn Gallagher have some sympathy.

LAWRENCE GALLAGHER, WAUBRA FARMER: Well, our farming neighbours that we know a lot better, they're genuine people and we've lived beside them all our lives and we take them at their word and believe what they say. It's just, we haven't been affected by the noise issues and all the people as far as we know with wind towers haven't been affected, and we live in noisier areas.

KERRYN GALLAGHER, WAUBRA FARMER: I find it really sad if, you know, these people are getting sick. If- you know, you've got to take their word for it and I mean they genuinely believe that they are sick.

And you know I find it really sad to think that it's come to this, you know, it is affecting them - where I just know that it's just not affecting us at all.

ANDREW FOWLER: But others in Waubra are having problems, blighting what should be a wonderful time to be a farmer.

Carl Stepnell runs sheep on his property.

CARL STEPNELL: WAUBRA FARMER: We’ve had such good seasons in the last couple of years. Usually this time of year we'd be bloody flat out feeding them.

ANDREW FOWLER: So the mills are still today up there.

CARL STEPNELL: Yeah, yeah... yeah.

ANDREW FOWLER: How many of them are there? There's five within 1200 metres of the house there. The closest one is 900 metres.

ANDREW FOWLER: Now they’ve moved out because of the sound of the turbines.

What’s the noise like?

CARL STEPNELL: Oh... it varies a lot. Sometimes it’s a constant roa, then it's a swooshing and it just... they’re different all the time. Yeah.

ANDREW FOWLER: It might look like a rural idyll but when the turbines are turning for Carl and Samantha, it’s anything but.

Though they regularly return to manage the 4,200 acre property, they never stay overnight.

CARL STEPNELL: Samantha got affected first.

It took me about six months before I started feeling a bit indifferent and started getting sort of tingling in the head and headaches. And then it just, you could feel it eventually getting worse and worse.

You'd just try to fight it off. You just think it's not real, 'cause it's affecting your day, every day and night.

And then eventually, you start waking up at night - two, three in the morning wake up every night, and you just couldn't get back to sleep. You're just wide awake

ANDREW FOWLER: How did you feel sick? What was it like?

SAMANTHA STEPNELL, WAUBRA FARMER: Like being in a cabin of a plane. That's the only way I can explain it, is just the ear pressure and headaches - and the nausea.

Just didn't - the pressure in my ears didn't go away. It just got worse.

The longer I was around the turbines the worse I was feeling.

ANDREW FOWLER: Samantha says the pain had a big impact on her health. She became lethargic and in the end sought medical help.

CARL STEPNELL: The doctor wanted to put her on anti-depressants. That's what he wanted to prescribe her with and we just come to the conclusion, there's a way out.

We're not. We can't feel trapped into feeling this way so we moved off the farm into Ballarat and bought another house, yeah.

ANDREW FOWLER: The decision to move out and travel back to Waubra several times a week has put a big strain on the family - especially their youngest son, who they had to remove from the local school.

SAMANTHA STEPNELL: Oh well he didn't want to leave his friends. He didn't want to leave his home. We didn't want to leave.

We had no choice but to leave. We, we honestly didn't. There was no way out except for us to move away from our home. You don't, you don't move away from home when there's no problem.

CARL STEPNELL: No. No and he did it really tough for weeks.

SAMANTHA STEPNELL: He, for two weeks he cried every day. It was... it was the hardest thing I've ever had to see him go through (crying). It was just...

He didn't want to leave his school. He still doesn't. He still thinks that he'll be back here one day. We come back out to the farm but not to live.

ANDREW FOWLER: The proposition that wind turbines make people sick has been rejected by mainstream science, although some studies have found the sound of the turbines causes annoyance and sleep deprivation.

PROFESSOR SIMON CHAPMAN, PUBLIC HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: There's no doubt that there are some people who live close to turbines who don't have them on their property who say that they're being annoyed and kept awake, and even being made ill by them.

But interestingly there are also people who have them on their property, who live just as close or closer, who curiously don't say that it makes them ill or that it annoys them.

So if you've got fifteen of these things on your property you wake up every morning knowing that you've got $150,000 in the bank.

The question is whether that variable may mediate feelings of annoyance or feelings of being ill.

ANDREW FOWLER: Eight years earlier when the turbine companies came through town offering tens of thousands of dollars to site their wind farms on local properties there was little opposition.

But in the years to come, when the turbines began operating, they would create a strange notoriety for the town.

Waubra was developing a reputation, not for the lamb it produced from its rolling green pastures, but for Waubra Disease - claims that the wind farms were producing sounds at a frequency too low to hear, but damaging to the health of those who lived nearby.

Noel Dean became convinced his symptoms were caused by soundwaves from the massive wind turbines.

He bought his own audio equipment and approached Graeme Hood, at the nearby University of Ballarat, to investigate. Hood is an electrical engineer with a physics degree.

(Loud crackling noise)

GRAEME HOOD, ASSOCIATE RESEARCHER, UNIVERSITY OF BALLARAT: And so this is, we understand, is the noise directly from the turbine.

This graph up here clearly shows that the bulk of the noise comes from a range of frequencies that aren’t very well heard. You know, it's a fairly high level of noise and yet you won’t perceive that as being loud.

ANDREW FOWLER: His recordings revealed a high level of sound at low frequencies which are difficult for the human ear to detect.

GRAEME HOOD: Well, The brain thinks it's quiet but the ears may be telling you something else, or the body may be telling you something else. It's much louder

ANDREW FOWLER: But what he didn’t find was high levels of so-called infrasound, sounds at a frequency so low they can’t be heard at all.

A Danish study published last year came to similar conclusions.

It was infrasound that Noel Dean believed was damaging his health.

GRAEME HOOD: We were looking for something in the order of 110 to 120 decibels.

ANDREW FOWLER: So the levels that you found, was that the level that would do damage to people?

GRAEME HOOD: No, I don't think so, no.

ANDREW FOWLER: Like Noel Dean, his neighbours the Stepnells, remain unconvinced by Graeme Hood’s findings.

They’re sure that there’s something more to turbine noise and it's making them sick.

DR SARAH LAURIE: You just tell your story. That's what people need to hear.

ANDREW FOWLER: Much of what they’ve learnt came from Dr Sar Laurie.

DR SARAH LAURIE: Have you found that the symptoms have got better?

SAMANTHA STEPNELL: Yes, especially of a night. I think sleep’s number one and you can, you know, to know that you can drive away and get a good night’s sleep.

ANDREW FOWLER: Dr Laurie’s been in regular contact with the Stepnells and others in Waubra, reinforcing her belief that wind turbines can make people sick.

DR SARAH LAURIE: The reason I became aware was because we'd had a neighbour tell us that there were wind turbines proposed for the hills near my home, and there was mixed views amongst the neighbours. Some were very concerned, others were less so.

I certainly was in the group not concerned about the turbines. I was unaware that there were any health implications at all.

ANDREW FOWLER: Originally Dr Laurie, an unregistered doctor from South Australia, was in favour of wind farms.

(Photos of Dr Laurie's children at a pro wind farm demonstration)

She took her two young children on a demonstration supporting them.

She says she only became aware of health issues when she learnt of work by a British GP, Dr Amanda Harry. Dr Harry claims to have discovered problems among some residents living near a wind farm in south west England.

DR SARAH LAURIE: She found that people developed a range of symptoms, which varied between individuals in a household, but they only came on when the turbines were operating. And these people didn't have the symptoms either when they were away from the turbines or when the turbines were not operating.

And they ranged from chronic severe sleep deprivation, headaches, nausea, tinnitus or ringing in the ears.

ANDREW FOWLER: There was someone else keenly interested in work being done overseas investigating possible links between illness and wind farms.

Not far from Waubra stands the stately home of Mawallok. It’s been in the hands of Peter Mitchell’s family for decades.

PETER MITCHELL, WAUBRA FOUNDATION: The garden was designed by Guilfoyle and Guilfoyle was renowned for his sort of landscapes.

ANDREW FOWLER: Its gardens are listed as some of the world’s most beautiful but there were plans to build wind farms on the hill tops beyond the lake.

PETER MITCHELL: Well you can see that ridge up here between ourselves and the mountains, and it's not very far away, that ridge. That was to be covered with turbines so that they would stand well above any of those trees.

So the minute you'd start walking down the garden, they'd be in your face.

ANDREW FOWLER: What was worse for Mitchell, they would also be placed close to the border of the property. He didn’t want his family to have to leave. He decided to fight.

PETER MITCHELL: Farmers love their houses. They love being on their property. They don't want to be anywhere else.

But they leave and what happens? When they leave the symptoms disappear. They come back to work the property, the symptoms reappear.

Now it isn't very hard to join the dots there

ANDREW FOWLER: Mitchell was better prepared than most to fight the turbines. He’s a company director with a history of charity work. He was president of the National Stroke Foundation and a board member of the World WildLife Fund.

Mitchell put his considerable skills together to stop the turbines. Last year he founded a body called the Waubra Foundation designed to against wind farms on health grounds.

PETER MITCHELL: We are trying to bring to people's attention - developers, bureaucrats, government ministers, that wind turbines are dangerous to residents' health.

And that's what I'm on about.

ANDREW FOWLER: And the anti-wind campaign is starting to gather momentum. In Collector, three hours south west of Sydney, locals became worried about plans to build almost a thousand turbines in the district.

TONY HODGSON, FERRIER HODGSON: What’s going to happen if one of those turbines over there chucks off a piece the size of a Commodore and hits on to the Hume Highway, hits the grid, hits the train line?

ANDREW FOWLER: Tony Hodgson, co-founder of insolvency accountants Ferrier Hodgson has a country property near a proposed site. Originally, a self confessed NIMBY, he didn’t want one in his backyard.

ANDREW FOWLER: So was there any moment when you decided that you were against the turbines? Was it a NIMBY for you in the first place?

TONY HODGSON: In the first place, absolutely because you know, visually, I think they're a horrible looking thing. There's no degree of beauty about them.

But then I thought I had an obligation to enlighten myself as to what was behind them and how they worked. And the more I started looking into it, the more concerned I became on health, public safety, you know visual amenity.

ANDREW FOWLER: With up to 80 turbines proposed close to his property, Hodgson began researching the issue. He discovered the anti wind farm lobby was a tight network.

TONY HODGSON: I started by getting on the internet and I found a crowd in Ontario in Canada, and read all they had and corresponded with them and then they put me in touch with Sarah Laurie - Doctor Laurie in South Australia - so I started talking to her.

Then I got in touch with Peter Mitchell.

ANDREW FOWLER: What is your view of the medical science presented by Doctor Laurie?

TONY HODGSON: Well... I'm swayed by it quite dramatically otherwise I wouldn't be you know involved with her in the Waubra Foundation. But I want to see, as Sarah says, I want to see the research done.

The- you know, I want to see the peer review research done here in Australia allied with the research that's been done round the world to establish the position.

I actually think that the position she's put forward will be established with the research but till it's done, nobody's going to accept anything that she says.

(Noisy community meeting)

ANDREW FOWLER: Hodgson teamed up with other locals to fight the wind farms.

They joined forces with an anti wind turbine group, the Landscape Guardians. Just down the road from his property, they organised a public meeting in Yass – part of a national campaign.

Star billing at the meeting went to Dr Sarah Laurie, the medical director of the Waubra Foundation.

(Film strip showing wind turbine being blown up and falling)

ANDREW FOWLER: Highly provocative images showed turnbines in flames, an unusual event but one that alarmed the audience.

To ram home the message, they were also warned about the potential of bushfires.

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE 1: If a car is faulty, it gets withdrawn from the market. If a drug goes on the market and it is found to be causing health problems, it gets pulled off the market.

So what will it take for wind farms to be pulled off the market? What sort of evidence will it take?

MAN IN AUDIENCE 1: These wind turbines have set farmer against farmer, friend against friend.

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE 2: Everyone has got to think, there is a thousand of them. Nobody has ever done it to this scale and plonked people in the middle of them.

ANDREW FOWLER: The meeting taps into fears that no one is listening to their complaints.

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE 3: We feel like democracy has left us high and dry.

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE 1: What would it take, as far as evidence and research goes, for have those turbines shut down, everywhere, just shut them down.

(Applause)

DR SARAH LAURIE (to meeting): This is not new...

ANDREW FOWLER: Dr Laurie warns, among many things, that wind turbines are linked to high blood pressure and even heart attacks. Her rather startling assertion plays to the mood of the meeting.

DR SARAH LAURIE: I actually believe that we know enough now to say "We need to adopt a precautionary approach".

I’m finding that people 10 kilometres away from existing turbines, 3 mega watts, on cleared hills in South Australia and smaller turbines here are causing symptoms that are directly related to turbine operations over that distance of 10 kilometres.

ANDREW FOWLER: At the end of the meeting the feeling in the room was overwhelming.

MAN: I wouldn't mind asking for a show of hands of all those people that would actually support a commission of inquiry into the wind turbine industry.

(Everyone raises their hand)

Anyone against?

(All hands fall)

WOMAN AT MEETING: I think it’s similar to the asbestosis or tobacco industry situation where if we don’t act now we’re going to find too late that people have been very severely affected.

ANDREW FOWLER: As the meeting winds up, many are clearly distressed by what they’ve been told about the potential dangers of wind farms.

(To woman) Is health an issue for you?

WOMAN AT MEETING: Absolutely. I have got two young children and it is an issue, not only for myself, and my husband, for my four and six year old children that I am bring up.

ANDREW FOWLER: As well as public meetings around the country, the anti wind lobby has funded what its critics call a scare campaign.

(Excerpt from Anti wind turbine lobby ad)

(Two young girls sit on a log in the country, wind turbine blades slice menacingly through text on a blue sky)

SCREEN TEXT: High blood pressure.

GIRL 1: It's our future, our health and our wildlife at risk.

(Blades slice through text)

SCREEN TEXT: Headaches... Sleep deprivation

GIRL 2: It feels to me like our community is splitting apart becuase of these wind turbines.

(Blades slice through text)

SCREEN TEXT: Ear pain... motion sickness.

Is this fair?

PROFFESSOR GARY WITTERT, HEAD OF THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE: If you whip up anxiety, people will generate many of these symptoms. There's fear of the unknown, there's activists creating concern among the population.

We all get headaches from time to time. Now if someone comes along and tells you that your headaches are because there are wind turbines, " now I know why I've got headaches".

CARL STEPNELL, WAUBRA FARMER: This is real. This isn't just in our heads. This was a real problem and it just was horrible. You could see- I could see Sam getting worse and worse.

ANDREW FOWLER: Many leading medicos and public health experts seriously question any links between sickness and wind farms, and the research cited to support the case.

PROFESSOR SIMON CHAPMAN, PUBLIC HEALTH, SYDNEY UNIVERSITY: People who cite or refer to that research are the same people who publish it so it's, if you like, a kind of a self-citation phenomenon. It's a disease which is certainly not recognised by mainstream medicine, and the people who are pushing it appear to be a fairly small circle of people.

PROFESSOR GARRY WITTERT: I think I would have to be very concerned with the quality of evidence that is masquerading as medicine and health and public health that is nothing more than activism, notwithstanding the fact that some people are distressed.

ANDREW FOWLER: What's your response to the assertion that many of the people that are ill have a problem that is psychosomatic, it's self-induced?

DR SARAH LAURIE: Okay. Look I know that argument's there. However, the interviews that I've had with affected residents and had with their treating doctors suggest that there is in fact a very serious clinical problem, or problems, going on.

ANDREW THOMSON, ACCIONA: Look I think the way Sarah Laurie has applied herself to this is deeply disturbing. I mean, it's deeply disturbing to us and the rest of the industry.

She's a medical qualified person and she's travelling the country far and wide making all sorts of allegations about the sorts of health impacts that people should expect from wind farms, which includes nowadays things like diabetes, heart attacks.

I mean, she's making claims that wind farms will cause these sorts of things in people and she's travelling around the country meeting with community groups spreading this message and and in our view it's highly irresponsible. And in itself, it's causing mass hysteria.

ANDREW FOWLER: Despite the criticism, Dr Laurie says she has seen enough anecdotal evidence to support her claims after talking to those affected.

DR SARAH LAURIE: Some of the information that came out of those conversations really worried me in terms of not just the range of health problems that people were having, but also the severity of them.

And a couple of things that were highlighted in those conversations were these episodes of acute hypertensive crisis, where people developed symptoms - often, you know suddenly...

ANDREW FOWLER: That's blood pressure?

DR SARAH LAURIE: Yes, blood pressure. So, remarkably elevated blood pressure -dangerously so. And the symptoms that one particular individual described - severe onset of sudden headache, accompanied by nausea, a sensation of his heart wanting to leap out of his chest, and just feeling as if he was going to- about to die

ANDREW FOWLER: Professor Gary Wittert rejects the links to illness and questions Dr Laurie’s reliance on anecdotal evidence.

Professor Wittert, the head of Discipline of Medicine at the University of Adelaide, has given expert evidence for ACCIONA in a recent court case.

But he has also completed one of the first independent studies that found there’s no connection between wind farms and sickness.

PROFESSOR GARY WITTERT: We looked at two wind farm areas in Victoria. We looked at Waubra and Yambuk. And we looked at Snowtown and Hallett Hill in South Australia.

ANDREW FOWLER: How many people did you look at?

PROFESSOR GARY WITTERT: The total number of people would be 10 to 12,000, I guess, maybe a bit less.

So what we did was we drew a 10 kilometre zone around the wind farm. This is the 10 kilometres that Dr Laurie tells us is the danger zone, so we thought that was reasonable to choose.

ANDREW FOWLER: Using data from the the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, Professor Wittert compared the number of medical prescriptions issued to people living in areas with and without turbines.

PROFESSOR GARY WITTERT: I can tell you from a preliminary look - and we will send this to peer review as soon as it's fully analysed - there is no hint of any effect on a population basis for an increased use of sleeping pills or blood pressure or cardiovascular medications whatsoever.

RANDALL BELL, PRESIDENT, LANDSCAPE GUARDIANS (on phone): Charlie, it's Randall here. How are you?

ANDREW FOWLER: Though health is the latest issue to be used against wind farms, the history of opposition goes back years.

RANDALL BELL (on phone): Have you organised anything about meeting with the Minister yet?

ANDREW FOWLER: Victorian solicitor Randall Bell led the anti wind farm campaign when he was chairman of the Australian National Trust.

It had some wins, preventing wind farms from being sited in areas of natural beauty.

But it was when he left the National Trust in 2003 and set up the Landscape Guardians which drew its inspiration from an English group, the Country Guardians, who are vehemently opposed to wind farms, that the fight became ideological.

ANDREW FOWLER: The Federal Government has a target of 20 percent renewable by 2020. Are the Landscape Guardians doing their best to see that this is not provided by wind power?

RANDALL BELL: Well, it's the Government's target. It's their choice, it's their decision. All we will say is that wind will never deliver on it, not in a 100 million years. The only thing that would deliver on it would be gas.

And they ought to wake up to that.

They know. They know very well that wind is not going to deliver.

ANDREW FOWLER: Four Corners has been told that two members of the conservative think tank the Institute of Public Affairs have been influential in a committee advising the Landscape Guardians.

Are you surprised that the Institute of Public Affairs is actively involved in giving advice to the people that are opposed to wind farms?

MARK DREYFUS: Uh... I could say that nothing the Institute of Public Affairs does surprises me. They've played a very active role in supporting what I would treat as climate change scepticism or denial of the science of climate change.

ANDREW FOWLER: But there's people you have here...

RANDALL BELL: Yeah.

ANDREW FOWLER: ..do have links and have worked for the IPA.

RANDALL BELL: A lot of them have two arms and two legs as well.

ANDREW FOWLER: Unlike some prominent members of the IPA, Randall Bell says the Landscape Guardians don’t have a position on global warming.

RANDALL BELL: I have said countless times that it is one of the great debates that we need to have of our time.

ANDREW FOWLER: So you're a sceptic?

RANDALL BELL: I'm becoming, sadly, more sceptical about it because... that seems to be the conclusion. Instead of...

ANDREW FOWLER: For Randall Bell and the Landscape Guardians, the battle against wind farms is no longer purely a scientific argument.

RANDALL BELL: It's always political. It always was. I never got it until very late in life that it was always going to be about votes.

ANDREW FOWLER: So it's a battle. It's a political battle.

RANDALL BELL: Yes.

ANDREW FOWLER: And you use any weapon you can to win that ?

RANDALL BELL: Yes.

ANDREW FOWLER: To win that fight?

RANDALL BELL: Yeah.

(Senate enquiry, many people with protest signs behind the seats)

SENATOR RACHEL SIEWERT, CHAIR OF SENATE COMMITTEE: Now I understand that each of you would have been given information about parliamentary privilege and the protection of witness and evidence...

ANDREW FOWLER: The anti wind lobby has played its politics well, managing to get a Senate inquiry into the health impacts of wind farms.

Last month Carl Stepnell gave emotional evidence before the inquiry.

CARL STEPNELL: ..but a power line is going through. Then they'll turn up through another area of our farm which is wall to wall native trees. All those trees will be cut down and there's a magic word of offsets so they can do what they want.

Um... (voice cracks) it's very disturbing.

(Long pause)

Sorry about this.

SAMANTHA STEPNELL (pats her husband): It's okay.

ANDREW FOWLER: The inquiry recommended that further scientific studies be carried out.

SENATOR RACHEL SIEWERT: We have found that there have been adverse health effects found in some people near wind farms.

However - and this is a very important however - we have not found that that is necessarily associated with noise or vibration. That is particularly important.

ANDREW FOWLER: While Australia may still be having the debate, overseas in Europe, Scandinavia and North America they’ve already made up their minds.

ANDREW THOMSON, ACCIONA: I think, for people that are unsure about the benefits they should look to other parts of the world where the industry has been developed successfully.

In this country, I think we're at in the very early stages of change and for some people that's easy to deal with, and for others it's it's difficult.

DR MARK DIESENDORF, INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS, UNSW: Yes, well I think Denmark has been a fantastic success story. It is the country with the greatest proportion of electricity coming from wind.

Last year 21 per cent of Danish electricity came from the wind. This year, with a new wind farm built off shore, it will probably be 25 per cent of Danish electricity from the wind

PROFESSOR GARY WITTERT: You take countries like Scandinavia, Scotland, Germany where there is a fairly reasonable density of wind farms, there is no evidence of a whole scale effect of adverse consequences for human health.

(Speeded up shot of turbines spinning)

ANDREW FOWLER: If Australia is to reach its target of 20 per cent renewable energy by 2020, wind farms have to be part of the equation.

A challenge will be overcoming growing fear in the community that they pose a health problem.

And for its part, the anti wind farm lobby will have to produce sound scientific evidence if their claims are to be taken seriously.

KERRY O'BRIEN: In the meantime, those concerns represent another political headache for Julia Gillard to manage.

Next week on Four Corners, as the 10th anniversary of September 11 edges closer, we present a story on the notorious Guantanamo Bay US military prison, and how it impacted on the lives of three people – all intimately involved with the prison and all casualties of George Bush’s war on terror.

Until then, goodnight.

 

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD:

WISCONSINS DIRTY GREEN SECRET: The most recent post construction mortality studies confirm that Wisconsin's wind turbine related bat-kill rate is the highest in North America and is considered to be unsustainable.

Aside from a single article by Tony Walter in the Green Bay Press Gazette, the media has been silent on this issue. (The article by Tony Walter is no longer available on the Press Gazette website (why?) but you can read it HERE.)

State and local environmental groups are taking a strict hands-off approach to this subject and have not spoken out, allowing the slaughter to continue with no complaint.

If you are a member of a Wisconsin environmental group, please urge them to look into this issue and speak up.

HOW BAD IS IT?

Wind developers claim turbine related bat mortality will cause about four deaths per turbine per year.

Pennsylvania is making headlines with a bat kill rate of 25 kills per turbine per year.

In Wisconsin, the most recent post construction mortality study puts the kill rate at over fifty bats per turbine per year.

Larry Roberts/Post-Gazette

Suzanne B. McLaren, the collection manager in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History's section of mammals, extends the wing of an approximately 3-inch specimen of a Seminole bat, rare in Pennsylvania, which was reportedly killed in the vicinity of a wind turbine.

The butterfly effect suggests the flapping of a tiny insect's wings in Africa can lead to a tornado in Kansas.

Call this the bat effect: A bat killed by a wind turbine in Somerset can lead to higher tomato prices at the Wichita farmers market.

Bats are something of a one-species stimulus program for farmers, every year gobbling up millions of bugs that could ruin a harvest. But the same biology that allows the winged creatures to sweep the night sky for fine dining also has made them susceptible to one of Pennsylvania's fastest-growing energy tools.

The 420 wind turbines now in use across Pennsylvania killed more than 10,000 bats last year -- mostly in the late summer months, according to the state Game Commission. That's an average of 25 bats per turbine per year, and the Nature Conservancy predicts as many as 2,900 turbines will be set up across the state by 2030.

This is a bad time to be a bat.

It may seem like a good thing to those who fear the flying mammals, but the wind farm mortality rate is an acute example of how harnessing natural energy can lead to disruptions in the circle of life -- and the cycle of business. This chain of events mixes biology and economics: Bat populations go down, bug populations go up and farmers are left with the bill for more pesticide and crops (which accounts for those pricey tomatoes in Kansas).

Wind industry executives are shelling out millions of dollars on possible solutions that don't ruin their bottom line, even as wind farms in the area are collaborating with the state Game Commission to work carcass-combing into daily operations.

"If you look at a map and see where the mountains are, everything funnels through Somerset," said Tracey Librandi Mumma, the wildlife biologist who led the March commission report on bird and bat mortality. "If I'm out driving ... I wonder, 'How many are being killed at that one?' "

Bats are nature's pesticide, consuming as many as 500 insects in one hour, or nearly 3,000 insects in one night, said Miguel Saviroff, the agricultural financial manager at the Penn State Cooperative Extension in Somerset County.

"A colony of just 100 little brown bats may consume a quarter of a million mosquitoes and other small insects in a night," he said. "That benefits neighbors and reduces the insect problem with crops."

If one turbine kills 25 bats in a year, that means one turbine accounted for about 17 million uneaten bugs in 2010.

Bats save farmers a lot of money: About $74 per acre, according to an April report in Science magazine that calculated the economic value of bats on a county-by-county basis.

In Allegheny County, bats save farmers an estimated $642,986 in a year. That's nothing compared with more agricultural counties in the region such as Somerset ($6.7 million saved), Washington ($5.5 million) or Westmoreland ($6.1 million).

Lancaster County? You owe bats $22 million.

In all of Pennsylvania, bats saved farmers $277.9 million in estimated avoided costs.

Initially, the "Economic Importance of Bats in Agriculture" article was meant to attract attention to the white-nose fungus virus that is wiping out entire colonies of bats across the country.

"We were getting a lot of questions about why we should care about white-nose syndrome," said author Justin Boyles, a post-doctoral fellow in bat research at the University of Tennessee. "Really, it's the economic impact that makes people listen."

The white-nose syndrome is compounding the wind turbine problems, having killed more than a million bats in the northeastern United States since 2006. It surfaced in Pennsylvania in 2008 and has killed thousands of in-state bats.

Meanwhile, the same creatures that save Pennsylvania farmers millions of dollars each year are also costing energy companies some big bucks as they try to stave off a mass execution beneath the blades.

Technology is being developed on sound generators that would deter the creatures from getting too close with a high-pitched noise only heard by bats. Some studies suggest that a slowdown in blade speed would reduce mortality.

But new technology is expensive and a blade slowdown would reduce the number of megawatts produced.

"All these options cost money," said Ms. Librandi Mumma, and it can be a tough sell to the private industry handing over the information that helps in the research. "You don't want to penalize the hand that's giving you the data."

Companies that have signed a Game Commission cooperation agreement must foot the bill for the commission's pre-construction reconnaissance and post-construction monitoring. The cost of the process varies, but the research can last several months and involve extensive habitat monitoring.

Under the agreement, each site conducts two years of mortality monitoring, sending a lucky employee out every day from April to November to comb the six meters around each turbine for carcasses. The employees are tested to see "how good they are at finding dead things," said Ms. Librandi Mumma.

"We got a dead snake once, because it was on the road and they were just collecting everything dead," she said. "It wasn't because the wind turbine killed it. The guy was just being thorough."

Some retrievers aren't so good.

"The average person finds 30 percent of the carcasses that are under a turbine," said Ms. Librandi Mumma, so the commission has come up with an algorithm that accounts for the missing bodies.

Agents will leave a carcass on the ground and note how long it takes to disappear -- this provides some insight on how many carcasses are unaccounted for because of living animals that have a taste for decomposing flesh.

Some wind companies with Pennsylvania operations have already seen seven-figure expenses on account of the bat problem.

NextEra Energy Resources, which operates the Somerset wind farms visible from the Pennsylvania Turnpike, has five active sites in Pennsylvania but did not participate in the Game Commission study.

The company monitors its mortality rates in house and funds outside research to reduce bird and bat deaths at its sites, said Skelly Holmbeck, environmental business manager at the Juno Beach, Fla.-based firm.

The funding program involving nine different research facilities is "in the millions overall," she said.

Migratory research that precedes any construction can employ bird watchers, nets or tape recorders designed to read the local ecosystem.

PPL Renewable Energy LLC of Allentown had planned on installing four turbines at its Lancaster County wind farm, but went with only two after sensitive avian populations were found nearby.

"There were design aspects that we elected not to use," said spokeswoman Mimi Mylin. "Some construction sites use lattice towers, but those can become roosting sites" for birds.

It's not just bats that are dying around wind turbines. An estimated 1,680 birds were killed by turbines last year, according to the state Game Commission report.

The disparity in mortality stems from biology. Birds typically crash into the blade and die from blunt force trauma, while bats suffer from a condition called barotrauma. It's the bat equivalent of the "bends" that scuba divers can suffer if they surface too quickly.

The rapid drop in air pressure around the blades causes the bats' lungs to burst, and they collapse with no ostensible lacerations or scars on the body.

"They just look like they're sleeping," said Ms. Librandi Mumma.

Bats must fly very close to the blades for their lungs to burst, and some researchers say the lights around the turbines might attract insects, which in turn attract bats.

Barotrauma in bats was only discovered in 2008, when a Canadian biologist thought to dissect one of the unblemished carcasses turning up at wind farms across North America.

"It was an 'a-ha' moment," said Ms. Librandi Mumma.

The turbine problem has yielded some other, unexpected contributions to bat research.

One carcass hunter in central Pennsylvania found a Seminole bat felled by barotrauma under the blades. Seminole bats live in the southeastern United States and rarely show up in Pennsylvania.

"It's like a double-edged sword," said Ms. Librandi Mumma. "You're excited because it's a new bat, but it's a dead one."

The Seminole specimen was kept on dry ice in a small styrofoam container by a commission employee and handed over to Suzanne McLaren, the collection manager at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History's research center in East Liberty. They met in the Ligonier Diamond town square -- home to a postcard-perfect gazebo and lots of sunlight -- for the transfer.

The bat, which may have traveled here from as far as Florida, found its final resting place in a freezer in East Liberty.